


Reflections

by ghostsea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Angst, Battle of Hogwarts, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Flashbacks, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Second War with Voldemort, dramione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28010244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostsea/pseuds/ghostsea
Summary: “Hermione Granger is dead.”One dead body in the Great Hall, one alive one tearing through the Forbidden Forest. It was Draco that caught her, pointed his wand directly in her face and held her up for the enemy to see. But reflections reveal the truth in the end, and even when the world around you has died, there can be a whispered name that saves you from your last breath.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 68





	Reflections

**_2 May, 1998_ **

_She was dead._

_Draco stared at her lifeless body, her skin like porcelain with her eyes closed and jaw set. They had left her there in the Great Hall, placed on the floor with all the other dead bodies where she stood out in her youth._

_Or perhaps only he noticed her youth. His memories of her so bound to his schooldays, he could only ever picture her as young._

_Christ, she had only ever been young. And now there she lay, the eternal teenager. He could feel his stomach turning and it took all he had not to throw up there and then._

_But there was more work to be done. Any show of weakness now and he’d be laying right there alongside her. And so he followed his orders, giving chase into the forest._

* * *

_She ran as quickly as she could, the branches of the trees reaching out to cut her cheek, and her feet slamming painfully into the jagged rocks on the ground._

_They were coming for her._

_All around her, heavy footsteps were pounding through the Forbidden Forest accompanied by yells, screams and bangs, the bursts of light from ricocheting spells the only thing to illuminate her way. Her chest felt like it was going to explode from the pain of fear, her heart hammering wildly against her ribcage._

_Someone was gaining on her. She could hear them run up from behind as panic gripped her. But their step seemed lazy she thought, as if their heart wasn’t quite in it._

_She snuck a glance over her shoulder._

_It was him. That shock of blond hair unmistakeable even in the darkness. Of course he would come for her. His final revenge._

_And then a searing pain ripped from her ankle and up her calf, folding her to the ground with a cry of anguish. And suddenly he was there, crouched over her, looking frantically over his shoulder, his eyes following his fellow Death Eaters as they chased the others._

_“Get up,” he hissed. She stared back at him defiantly. She would not give in to his demands. She would meet death face-to-face on her own terms._

_His eyes were angry, his face wild with panic. “Run,” he said._

* * *

**After**

It was a small ceremony, attended by only one witness as per legal requirement. He hurried the officiant along with a few snide remarks and sneers, but she knew his impatience and rudeness was only a mask to hide the fear that clawed at them both. 

They said it would be the happiest day of your life, your wedding day. And perhaps in another life it could have been, but in this life everything was done out of necessity. You left your house only when you had to, you used your words to speak only when spoken to, and you ate, slept and breathed only for the necessity of survival. 

Marriage was the same. A tool to survive. 

“Do you, Draco Malfoy, take this woman, Astoria Greengrass, to be your lawfully wedded wife?” 

“I do.” 

She held his eyes then as he placed the ring on her finger, those grey eyes that seemed to bore into her very soul, understanding her completely, who she was and who she had been. 

Because Draco knew, he was the only one that did. 

They had discussed the idea of marriage briefly before going ahead with it, and truthfully it didn’t take long for them to decide it was their best option. It would give him an excuse to leave the family home, pretend to wilfully hand over ownership of it to the Dark Lord as an act of goodwill. Perhaps they’d turn it into a museum one day, he had said convincingly, a shrine that followers all over the world could visit. The birthplace of the Dark Lord’s final magnificent plan. 

For her it gave her more than just an escape. It gave her a life. 

And now there she was with a new name. Astoria Malfoy. She never expected any type of marital bliss, and in the beginning she woke up every morning praying and hoping that it was all a bad dream. A bizarre, unfathomable nightmare that she’d shake her head at with a perplexed smile when the sun rose to creep in through the bedroom curtains. 

But it was always the sun itself that would shine a light on the truth, illuminating the bedroom to remind her that the curtains weren’t hers, that the bed was foreign, the walls a shade she’d never choose. And that was when reality would slink under those blankets with her. This was no dream. No dream could ever be this imaginative in its cruelty. 

They would sit together, alone in his new home, _their_ new home, just she and her husband. There were never any visitors. They would cook together, eat together, share what little news they could salvage together, until they began talking about more. About their childhoods, about their regrets, their could-have-been's and their happier times. 

And after a while she began to feel something. At first she thought it was the stirrings of sympathy, taking even her by surprise. The things he had done had once seemed so unforgivable to her, and perhaps they were, perhaps she could never forgive him. But he wasn’t asking for her forgiveness anyway. 

Mostly however, she began to understand him. She began to accept that bravery doesn’t come easy to everyone, and that you’re no use to your loved one's dead. She, of all people, knew that now. 

From there grew the tender moments. Him giving her his leftover food, her pouring a Firewhisky for him ready for when he came home, his arm stretching over the table to hold her hand as she cried again. 

Perhaps it was loneliness that did it to them in the end, or maybe it was genuine. The night they both stood in the kitchen, eyes locked on one another, her breathing shallow as he took three quick steps towards her and pressed his lips to hers. He pulled her body close to his as her hands tangled in his blond hair, and all she could think about was how right it felt. 

* * *

_“Run?” she gasped, clutching at her leg. “Just hand me over Malfoy, have your moment in the spotlight. God knows your family need it.”_

_He was glaring at her and she could tell his mind was working furiously._

_“Ahh, Malfoy’s caught a live one!” Someone was coming towards them, their cloak swishing across the forest floor, leaves crunching under the wearer’s boot._

_“Goddamn it,” Draco whispered before quickly pulling out his wand and tapping it on her head. “Crinus Muto,” he said before pointing it directly at her face, “Voltusio.”_

* * *

A quiet life suited her in the end. They had both been through so much, it was all they could ask for. A life in which they grew and taught each other, learning intimacy again, and how to once again care about another person so much it terrified you. 

How to love again. 

And love him she did. Sometimes it filled her wholly and she would reach out and stoke his hair as he lay snoring beside her. Other times it would be quieter, revealing itself when she cooked for him or helped him out of his coat or ran him a bath. 

But it was love all the same, and it carried her through it all. 

Some days, she would sit in front of the mirror, looking at her face as it aged, examining the faint lines and crow's feet with nothing more than a casual interest. She was lucky to have them, she knew, she was never meant to make it this far. The greying of her hair was almost indecipherable from the stark blonde, and she always kept it shoulder length and poker straight. The way it was when Draco saved her. 

* * *

_Draco pulled her to her feet and she yelped as her ankle buckled under her weight, but Draco had her arm tight, dragging her up as he pulled her with his whole body._

_“And who do we have here?”_

_She didn’t recognise the man that was coming towards her now, even though she was sure she knew every Death Eater by heart; Dolohov, Avery, Rookwood, Lestrange, Malfoy. He must be a Snatcher she thought, not party to the elite crowd that Lord Voldemort surrounds himself with._

_Well, here’s his big chance, she thought ruefully, a one-way ticket to the inner circle._

_She made to open her mouth, ignoring the pain in her ankle with tears welling in her eyes._

_“I know her from school,” Draco said quickly, beating her to the punch. “She’s a pure-blood.”_

_The man was close now, his eyes roving greedily over her face, his dark hair slick with grease._

_“Pure-blood, eh?” he said, showing his rotten teeth with a grin. “What was you running for then, if your blood was so clean?”_

_He couldn’t be this stupid, surely?_

_Draco shook her shoulder, willing her to answer with a warning look in his eye._

_“I didn’t know who you were,” she squeaked. “I didn’t know who I was running from.”_

_The Snatcher raised his wand to sweep the hair from her face and Draco snatched her back from his reach. “The Dark Lord said no more magical blood was to be spilled,” he growled. “She’s a pure-blood, she was in Slytherin house when I was. I can vouch for her.”_

_“Touchy, touchy... I reckon this one fancies you,” he said to her, jabbing his thumb at Draco. “Well, she’s all yours then Malfoy, do with her what you will. I’m off to catch bigger fish.”_

_And with a cruel smile, he ran from them, his stench following as she finally gave in to the pain in her ankle and lowered herself to the ground._

_“He didn’t recognise me,” she said breathlessly, her heart still hammering relentlessly in her chest. “Why didn’t he recognise me?”_

_Draco turned from her as he peered through the trees. “We have to move, more will be coming.”_

_“We?”_

_He spun on his heel to face her_ , _the sneer unmistakable on his face. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I just saved your life.”_

_She scoffed. “That idiot being too stupid to catch me out wasn’t you saving my life Malfoy.”_

_He stared back at her in disbelief before he strode towards her and crouched again, pointing his wand to a small ditch beside her right arm. “Aguamenti.”_

_Water shot from the tip of his wand, pooling into a deep puddle._

_“Look into it,” he commanded._

_She furrowed her brow before leaning over, grimacing at the pain that shot through her ankle as she did so._

_She saw nothing. Just a pool of black water as the sky and stars overhead reflected in its glassy surface. Except there was a face there now too she realised as she leaned closer. It was a woman’s face, with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes framed underneath arched eyebrows. A woman she had never seen before, with a tangle of straight, blonde hair tumbling from her head._

_And then she gasped before sitting back to face him. “You-”_

_“Yes,” he snapped._

_She looked back at the water and the woman’s eyes were staring frantically back at her. There was a cut on her cheek she realised._

_**Her** cheek. She reached to touch it and the woman in the reflection did the same. _

_“You’re no longer Hermione Granger,” he said. “Your new name is Astoria Greengrass."_

_Hermione was looking at herself in the reflection, feeling the high cheekbones as she touched her face._ _Her bushy, dark hair had been replaced, her brown eyes now the colour of the late sky, and her cheeks slimmed, giving her a haughty, almost regal look._

_"Hermione Granger is dead.”_

* * *

She never forgot who she was, not really, although she would never know who she could have been. Sometimes when the appearance-altering spells wore off she would stare into her own brown eyes, notice the grey strands in her thick dark hair, but it was like looking into the face of a stranger. Looking into the windows of another life that she would never know. 

It was the dead girl Astoria’s life she had lived, not Hermione’s. A life beseeched with grief, but with love too. A life granted to her by the one person she was sure wouldn’t have ever thought she deserved it. 

Draco Malfoy had changed her name twice, and each time she survived a little longer because of it. 


End file.
